Installing plugins & skills into Claude Code

Research summary — how GitHub projects actually get installed into Claude Code as of August 2026. Claude Code (anthropics/claude-code) reads the SKILL.md skill format and has first-class plugin/marketplace support.

Three paths

You want	Use
A skill available everywhere	Path A: skill root
A curated bundle (skills + commands + agents + hooks)	Path B: plugin from a marketplace
Publish your own plugin for others	Path C: build a marketplace repo

Path A — skills into a root (what aipx automates)

User-global: ~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md Project-scoped: <project>/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

From any GitHub repo, no clone needed:

npx github:zhangliang0115/ai-plugin install owner/repo#path:/skills/their-skill

New skills load on the next session; /doctor if in doubt. Claude Code also reads project .claude/skills/ — that's the place for team-shared workflow skills committed to the repo.

Path B — install a plugin from a marketplace

Inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add owner/repo        # any git repo hosting a marketplace.json
/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/owner/repo
/plugin install <plugin-name>@<marketplace-name>

A marketplace repo contains .claude-plugin/marketplace.json listing plugins; each plugin points at a directory holding .claude-plugin/plugin.json plus optional skills/, commands/, agents/, hooks/.

This very repo is a marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add zhangliang0115/ai-plugin
/plugin install ai-plugin-toolkit@ai-plugin

Path C — publish your own

1. Add .claude-plugin/plugin.json to your plugin directory.
2. (Optional) Make the repo a marketplace with .claude-plugin/marketplace.json — pointing one entry at "./" makes the repo both at once.
3. Users: /plugin marketplace add you/your-repo.
4. Add GitHub topics claude-plugin / claude-code / agent-skills for discoverability.

See the bundled claude-plugin-dev skill for quality rules and the publish-dual-target guide to also reach dsh/Codex/ Gemini/Copilot from the same source.

Cross-agent payoff

~/.agents/skills/ (the dsh + Codex shared root) and ~/.claude/skills/ are different directories — keeping them in sync by hand is the #1 papercut. aipx install --project writes every agent's project roots in one shot; for user scope, link ~/.agents/skills into ~/.claude/skills once. Full table: compatibility matrix.

References

• Marketplace mechanics: /plugin marketplace add + .claude-plugin/marketplace.json (see Chris Ayers' "Agent Skills, Plugins and Marketplace: The Complete Guide", March 2026)
• Official skills collection: anthropics/skills